Good morning and welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging!
Flame Acanthus • Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii
Much to almost everyone's delight Austin has yet to hit the 100° mark and we're already well into July. It's a welcome departure from recent summers when the temps soared for days and weeks on end beginning as early as June. It's summertime in Texas so it definitely has been hot 'round these parts but just not that hot! But that's all about to change this weekend with our first 100° day predicted for Sunday. Thankfully the triple digit heat will only last for a day or two. Next week the temps cool back down to the low 90s due to the latest weird and wild weather dubbed "the summer polar vortex" which will sweep south midweek. Y'all will get no complaints from this Central Texan enjoying a few days respite from the summer heat. There is even a chance of rain with the cold front which we desperately need as usual because everything is bone dry again. Hopefully it will also wash some of the Sahara African dust out of the air. The wayward desert sand has been noticeably smudging our beautiful skyline the past few days and causing a bit of misery for those sensitive to poor air quality. It's yet another example of just how interconnected we all are on this spinning orb hurtling through space and time.
And speaking of time...
Will old flowers soon never die?
It's difficult enough sometimes getting flowers to bloom when you want them to for as long as you'd like them to if you can get them to bloom at all. But change is on the horizon thanks to a little bit of genetic tinkering by scientists in Japan:
Japanese scientists seem to have figured out a way to slow down the aging process dramatically, albeit only in flowers. They zeroed in on a gene in a variety of morning glory, shut it off, and, voila, the flower's blooms suddenly had twice the normal lifespan. "Unmodified flowers started withering 13 hours after they opened, but flowers that had been genetically modified stayed open for 24 hours," says a researcher at National Agriculture and Food Research Organization near Tokyo. The striking result: When new blooms opened in the morning, paler ones from the day before were alongside them.
Good old-fashioned non-genetically altered Grandpa Ott morning glories
For a guy fast approaching the half-century mark a little spark of hope was ignited at the news of the flower fountain-of-youth but it was quickly squelched by the ice cold realities of science:
Theoretically, the find "could help unravel secrets on how to prevent cell decay in other organisms," observes the Daily Mail , but for now the discovery is confined to the world of flowers.
Damn.
Fortunately there are blooms in the garden this summertime although they'll all have to live out their lives naturally until scientists engineer their anti-aging breakthrough into a convenient liquid that can be applied much like fertilizer. So for now the blooming beauties will just have to live forever in digital pics:
Rock Rose • Pavonia lasiopetala
Moss Rose • portulaca
Sunrise Esperanza • Tecoma stans
Cheyenne Spirit Coneflower • Echinacea 'Cheyenne Spirit'
Brazilian Button Flower • Centratherum intermedium
Black Pincushion Flower • Scabiosa atropurpurea 'Black'
Fireworks Globe Amaranth • Gomphrena globosa 'Fireworks'
|
All the photos above were taken yesterday afternoon as I ran around snapping pics for the diary. Not too shabby of a display for summertime in Central Texas...